


The blood of the guardian, the body of the host, the well of all power.

by Xelamz



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gore, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27324661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xelamz/pseuds/Xelamz
Summary: A simple milk run goes sideways as Jesse and Gabe are stranded in farm country. Maybe they should have listened to Jack when he told them no one leaves Brooksfield alive.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	The blood of the guardian, the body of the host, the well of all power.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dorking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorking/gifts).



> For PoundCake during the McReyes Halloween Exchange. I am again late and beg forgiveness m_ _m, but I hope this provides for a little spooky pleasure.

It was early evening when Gabriel and Jesse arrived at the small town of Brooksfield Illinois. Collapsed walls cast jagged shadows over the street and exposed the guts of house after ancient house. Almost the entire town had fallen into such a state, giving Jesse the impression that he was riding between the ribs of some long-dead animal as he and Gabe made their way down Main Street. But as run down as it all was, there was no sign of vandalism, no tags, no heaps of junk, or signs of squatting. It was if most the inhabitants had just picked up and left one day, and no one had moved in to take their place.

It wasn't completely empty. A small cluster of houses at the end of the road were in decent repair, with trimmed lawns and a few with cars in the driveway. On one porch an older man and woman sat on a wooden bench. They watched the two men drive by silently, the flat looks on their faces barely registering any real interest.

At the end of town was a long building that had once been a train depot, back when the trains still stopped here, but after the tracks had been dismantled it like the rest of the town had slowly gone to pot. At some point someone had stuck the word "Bar" after the Union Depot sign and made some attempt at enterprise.

The old ads plastered to the walls were nearly a century out of date, and the flat screen television behind the bar displayed nothing but the occasional wave of static. The four men inside were likely half the town. They watched Jesse and Gabe as they entered, like a pride of lions deliberating over what to do about two mice who had stumbled between their paws. Jesse hadn't heard a peep of conversation before they had made their entrance, and as he and Gabe meandered up to the bar the room remained utterly silent. Gabe didn't acknowledge the attention and Jesse followed his lead, even though his every instinct was warning him not to turn his back to the men at the table. It helped that he honestly was parched from the long bike ride over.

"What do you have on tap?" Gabe asked.

"Coors," the barkeep answered. He sounded normal enough, at least.

"Two of those then."

They chugged their beers in more silence, the sense of being watched still tickling their backs. Once Jesse had downed his pint he spared a glance behind him. Yup, still being watched, and they weren't bothering to look the least bit embarrassed about it. He turned back to the barkeep, who had an identical expression as the rest of the town. "This place always this lively?"

The barkeep shrugged, probably the first expression of human emotion Jesse had seen since they rolled in. "Not much going on here," he said.

"You're telling me," Jesse grumbled. How were they going to cajole information out of a group of people that seemed about as personable as the business end of a pistol? Gabe wasn't even bothering to try. He had chugged his first beer, was halfway through another, and seemed to be ignoring every attempt by Jesse to catch his eye. So they sat there, in utter silence, until Gabe finished his drink, paid, and led Jesse out, trailed by the gaze of the entire establishment.

Six miles down the road they turned their bikes into a forested area and prepared to settle in for the night. Setting camp up was a welcome distraction from the unease that had followed them out of town. Jesse erected the portable tent and started gathering firewood while Gabe made a pit. They had brought some decent food to sell the lie that they were just cross country bikers taking a joy ride, but they ate their steaks and beans with little pleasure. The town had been smaller than they expected, and the residents there were unapproachable. If their quarry had somehow enlisted the town's aid to disappear from the law it was not going to be easy to finesse that fact out of them outside of just breaking into every house and searching each room one by one. Even with only the two of them, there was no way to be discreet in a town that had a population of barely ten people.

And there was that other thing. It head been on Jesse's mind the minute they stepped into the silent, eerie bar, and he was sure it was the source of Gabe's poor mood too. "You think the Strike Commander was telling the truth about that place being dangerous?" Jesse asked as they put away their cooking utensils and smothered the fire. "Something wasn't right about that town. Maybe he wasn't BSing us."

"Come on, don't tell me Jack got to you."

"I'm not saying I believe in ghosts, but I do believe in my instincts, and they're telling me something ain't right around here."

"And it couldn't possibly be that the townsfolk are harboring a known criminal and are hostile to outsiders."

"Well, sure, there's that, but... you really don't feel it?"

"Feel what? A heavy miasma of pure malice?"

"Yeah, so you do feel it?"

Gabe sighed, and turned to look at Jesse squarely. "I feel that literally every time I'm out in small town America, Jesse. It's just the natural reaction of the locals to melanin."

Jesse's face fell as the hope that he had finally been understood was crushed. "It's not that. I mean, there's that, but what I'm feeling is worse than that."

The rise of Gabe's eyebrows told Jesse he was in the process putting his foot deep down his throat, but Jesse never had gotten into the habit of quitting while he was ahead.

"I'm telling you. Something's wrong here and it's not just Confederates. Jack isn't the sort of guy to just lie to our faces, and he's not the sort of guy to spook. If he was scared for us coming here that's got to mean something, right?"

"Jack may do a good job of presenting himself as put together and professional, but he's a corn fed country boy at heart, with country boy superstitions. Just because he and his jock buddies used to talk about people disappearing back in high school doesn't mean it actually happened. I know a guy who knows a guy who had a cousin who saw the Holy Mother in his toast. Doesn't mean I'm Catholic."

"Sure, but-"

"Jesse, your concern is noted, but there's nothing we can do about it but proceed with the op as planned."

"We really going to try the bar again?"

"No, I couldn't hear myself think in there. There's a farm house a couple miles north. We'll go there, tell the farmer our bikes are giving us some issues, and chat him up and see what he knows."

"What do you mean you couldn't hear yourself think? I could have heard an ant cough in there it was so god damn quiet."

Gabe looked at Jesse like he had just said he was going sober. "You couldn't hear the television?"

"It was off."

"No..." Gabe said, slowly. "It was definitely on."

There was a long pause as both men sorted their thoughts.

"What was on the TV, out of curiosity?" Jesse asked.

Gabe opened his mouth, frowned, closed it. "I don't remember," he said, eventually. It wasn't like Gabe to miss the details. One never knew when a small thing turned out to be important. Gabe had drilled that fact into Jesse's head early on. "It was just white noise. Like those old analogue televisions that could lose a signal."

"What, like static?"

"Yeah, roaring static. You really couldn't hear it?"

"I couldn't hear a damn thing."

Gabe shrugged. "Maybe I'm more sensitive to whatever weird electronic shit was going on in there. Wouldn't be the first time SEP did something like that. Doesn't matter. We stop by the farmhouse tomorrow and see if he saw Dupris in town over the past few days."

"What if he's just as weird as the rest of the town?"

"Then it's night ops time."

Well if that wasn't just wonderful, Jesse thought to himself as the two of them turned in for the night. If Brooksfield was that eerie in the day he couldn't wait to see what it was going to be like in the pitch blackness of the country night. Gabe was clearly not willing to entertain any speculation about what they might find there. He'd always been dismissive of any sort of superstition, but Jesse had never seen him as irate as he had been when Jack had shown up in his office the day before and tried to convince him to give the op up. And he'd never seen Jack so out of sorts. He'd done his best to try to cajole Gabe into canceling the mission without explaining why he was so insistent, but eventually gave in and explained that it was an open secret in the area that if you went into Brooksfield you probably weren't coming out, and then refused to elaborate any more. The whole conversation ended in a shouting match after Jack insinuated that Gabe was going to get Jesse killed if he didn't listen. It would have been romantic, if it hadn't been so deeply strange. Jesse didn't consider himself a particularly superstitious person, but while he was sitting in that bar he couldn't help but feel like whatever it was that had gotten Jack so worked up was probably something that they should have been taking seriously.

Gabe was snoring lightly almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. Jesse lay next to him, trying not to worry to much about things he had no control over, and focused on the warmth of Gabe's flank and the comforting sounds of woodland creatures going about their business outside, until he too was restfully dreaming.

The next morning the entire campsite was blanketed in a thick and still fog. The air was just cold enough to be uncomfortable, and the two men hurried to break down camp and be on their way. Once everything had been packed and their presence had been erased as best as they could manage it they climbed onto their bikes and prepared to make their way to the nearby farm. But the turn of their keys did nothing, and no matter how much they kicked at and cajoled their vehicles there was no response. Gabe already looked like he had woken up on the wrong side of the tent, and as minutes passed without their finding any reason for why the bikes seemed to have lost all power over night, his mood grew darker and darker. Jesse was starting to worry that he'd break a piece of his bike clean off.

They could find nothing wrong with the bikes. If it was a problem with their circuitry, there wouldn't be anything they could do to fix it anyway. That the both of them had failed in exactly the same manner at the exactly the same time made it impossible to dismiss the idea that they had been sabotaged. But who could have done it remained a mystery. Had anyone snuck into camp the perimeter alarm would have alerted Gabe and Jesse, and the road had been completely empty as they made their way out of town. They hadn't been followed, and their hoverbikes had made no tracks. Jesse stood, hands on his hips, looking down at his bike as the discomfort that had been largely dispelled by a good night's sleep started creeping back in.

Gabe was still poking stubbornly around his own bike, disconnecting and reconnecting the battery, opening the consoles and checking the exhaust ports, but less out of an earnest belief that a solution was to be found than pure stubbornness. The both of them knew that without transportation the op was on its last legs. Even if they were able to flush their target out, moving him would now be major issue.

"Well," Jesse said, nonchalant, "I suppose we could call HQ and tell them to pick us up."

Gabe shot him a dark look, but even he knew when to take a loss. After spitting some choice words at his dead bike he fished his phone out of his pocket and started to poke at it.

The fog really had gotten thick, Jesse thought to himself. He could barely see out of the little clearing they had camped in. Everything was draped in a haze of gray. It was almost romantic, if the circumstances hadn't been so damn frustrating. Maybe he and Gabe could use the down time to their advantage while they waited for a pick up.

"For _fuck's_ sake."

Jesse's attention snapped back to Gabe just in time to see the phone shatter in Gabe's fist. It was dead. Jesse's was too, when they checked, and so was the perimeter alarm, the night goggles, and every other piece of electronic equipment they had stowed in their bags. Even the emergency triggers, which were meant to alert Watchpoint Grand Mesa to a request for immediate extraction, weren't responding. The two agents stood among their scattered, useless tech, Jesse with a growing sense of dread, and Gabe a growing sense of anger.

"EMP?" Jesse asked.

"Maybe. If that's the case we're in deeper than we thought we'd be. There's no reason for someone like Dupris to have tech as advanced as a localized EMP on him. Either we've stumbled into a den of criminality in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, or we were led here."

Dupris was, as far as they knew, nothing more than a small time career criminal with ties to a few national gangs. The only reason Blackwatch had even been watching him was because he had taken to playing courier for a group of counterfeiters and Blackwatch wanted to identify their customers. But none of their intel had suggested that Brooksfield was a factor in their operation. As far as they could tell, Dupris had simply stopped in to make a pit stop on his way to Chicago and never left.

"Do you think-"

"No, I don't want to hear it Jesse."

"You gotta admit, this is getting weird."

"All this means is there's a possibility Dupris, or whoever he's working with, knows we're here. So get your head back to reality and take this seriously. We'll make our way to the farmhouse on foot. It's not far, and we can borrow their phone and update Jack on the situation. I'm sure he expects us to have been sacrificed to Beelzebub or something already. And stay alert."

Jesse needed no reminding to be on the lookout. As they made their way to the farmhouse the dense wheat crowded up to the edge of the narrow road, and the fog showed no sign of lifting, giving the morning a heavy, claustrophobic feel. They could barely see a few feet in front of them, but eventually the fog began to lift and the silhouette of a building began to take shape in the distance. An old farmhouse finally appeared in front of them. Like the town nearby it seemed like a place suspended in time. The modern machinery of agriculture appeared to be missing. In the muddy field nearby sat some old manual tractors amid a cluster of silos and barns, and at the edge of the compound was the house, a three story behemoth looking like the quintessential heartland home.

The two men made their way to the door and rang the bell. As they listened to the sound of footsteps approaching from inside the house Jesse took a look around the porch. It was almost devoid of decoration, but etched into the banister was a line of symbols carved into the wood, stretching across the whole porch like some sort of decorative border. The symbols were small, and nothing that Jesse could recall seeing before, but before Jesse could get closer for a better look the front door creaked open and a man appeared behind the front screen.

He was younger than Jesse expected to be, maybe a few years his junior, and he seemed to lack the slow, passive attitude of his neighbors down the road as he eyed his visitors up and down.

"Can I help you boys?"

"Sorry to bother you," Gabe said. "Our bikes have died down the road and we were wondering if we could use your phone to get a tow truck."

Jesse could see the man calculating. If he lived alone it would make sense to be wary about the sudden appearance of two rough looking men saying suspicious things. But he seemed to be satisfied with whatever conclusion he came to in his head, and pushed the screen door open, beckoning the two of them in.

The inside of the farmhouse was just as stark as the outside. It looked like it hadn't been remodeled since the twentieth century. Where one might expect to see family photos or kitschy artwork on the walls there was only chipping paint. The man led Gabe an Jesse into the kitchen, where he gestured to an old land line phone sitting on a counter. "You can try getting a tow truck out here," he said, "but you're not going to have much luck. No one services this area."

"Why's that?" Jesse asked as Gabe picked up the phone and started dialing.

The man smiled. "Just an inconvenient location. It isn't worth their while."

Jesse didn't quite consider himself a country boy, but he had lived in some barren places, and it was his experience that if money could be made there would be someone willing to travel to make it. It wasn't as if they were that far from civilization anyway. The next town after Brooksfield was only 20 miles away. Not that it mattered in a practical sense. It wasn't a tow company that Gabe was calling. Jesse could hear Jack's voice on the other line as Gabe quietly played the part of a stranded biker and described their situation as vaguely as possible.

While Gabe dealt with Jack Jesse tried to distract their host. "Don't think I caught your name, Mr..."

"Call me Matthew."

"Alright, Matthew, thanks a bunch for helping us out. It was a real head scratcher when the bikes wouldn't start up this morning."

Matthew smiled again. It gave the impression that he was enjoying a joke that had flown over Jesse's head. "Those newer models aren't as reliable as their manufacturers would like you to believe."

"Suppose so. I noticed when we were coming in that your machines were all pretty old school."

"That's right. They do the job just fine, and they don't have a mind of their own."

"Seems like the town nearby has the same idea. I can't recall seeing anything more advanced than a lawn mower there."

"I don't suspect you would. Other people might think it odd, but we're happy keeping to the old ways."

The conversation between Jack and Gabe was clearly taking a turn for the worse. Gabe wandered off as far as the phone would let him to hiss at Jack in relative privacy, which left Jesse to keep their host occupied.

"I noticed you had some interesting decoration on that porch banister. Don't recall ever seeing those sorts of designs. Is it a local folk thing?"

"You have a good eye. Yes, it's an old tradition. You'll see the same thing on a lot of the farmhouses in the area. The design is everywhere."

Jesse followed the direction of Matthew's pointing. Sure enough, the little marks were slithering their way along the wooden joining at the top of the kitchen, barely as wide as finger and easy to miss.

"The old folklore says the marks protect the home," Matthew explained.

"Do they mean anything?"

"It says, 'The blood of the guardian, the body of the host, the well of all power.'"

"Doesn't sound very Christian," Jesse joked.

Matthew laughed, "No, it very much does not."

Gabe returned from the other side of the kitchen and hung up the phone. "A friend of ours is going to come pick us up. It looks like he won't be here until tomorrow. I know it's an imposition but would it be alright if we stayed over? We're both pretty handy if we can do anything to help out in return."

The offer seemed to please Matthew, who agreed quickly and gave them use of a guest bathroom and some lunch while they waited. The rest of the house was just as stark as everywhere else. There was no sign of any actual habitation except for the fact that Matthew existed. The rooms were kept neatly, as if guests might be expected at any moment, and the bathrooms were stocked with spare toiletries, but there was no sign any hobbies, or heirlooms, or trinkets, or really anything at all. After lunch, which consisted mostly of Matthew asking Jesse and Gabe about themselves and Jesse and Gabe lying through their teeth, Matthew gave them run of the house and went off to do whatever farmers did in the middle of the day. For the first time since they had arrived they could talk freely.

"Matthew seems like a nice enough fella at least," Jesse said as they cased the house. "Little odd but not like them townsfolk. He's got wards on the house."

"He's got what?"

Jesse showed Gabe the symbols etched into the top of the walls. "Maybe it's to keep the townsfolk out," he joked.

Gabe snorted in dismissal. "More country boy superstition. If we manage to flush Dupris out I'm going to make him suffer for putting me through this. You keep poking around. I need to find some pain killers."

"Everything alright?"

"Just a migraine. My head's been killing me since this morning and now it's traveling down my damn spine. If I don't find some tylenol or something I'm going to puke."

"Want me to kiss you and make it better?"

"What I want is some goddamn meds."

What a time to have a flare up, Jesse thought as Gabe went to pilfer the medicine cabinet. He had confided in Jesse early in their relationship that he still suffered from attacks of severe pain as a result of the SEP, and had made Jesse swear not to tell another soul, concerned that if the information got out it could put into doubt his readiness on the field. All the secrecy meant he wasn't seeking any sort of relief from his condition outside of a liberal use of painkillers, and Jesse had already found himself in a shouting match with Gabe over the whole situation more than once. He could already prognosticate a new fight in their future once this mess of an op was done with.

As he pondered the unsurpassed stubbornness of the man he loved Jesse continued looking around, room by room, for anything of interest, but aside from the markings the house seemed designed to kill with boredom. It was so barren of personality that that itself was alarming, but what it meant Jesse couldn't say. After the attic, second, and first floors had all proven busts, Jesse went to try his luck with the basement. It was almost a relief when the door turned out to be locked. Finally, something interesting. Out came the lockpicks. From the wide, ancient looking keyhole Jesse expected that a butter knife could have gotten the thing open, but the lock proved unexpectedly resilient. After a few minutes of prodding, he realized keyhole was not the thing keeping the door closed. Something else was blocking the door, and the gap was so well sealed that he couldn't tell what the obstruction might be. It was possibly an electromagnetic lock, but that level of security for a simple farmhouse door was well beyond necessary.

Thoughts of ghosts and evil spirits fled Jesse's head as this new and interesting puzzle presented itself. Jesse put his picks away and bounded up the steps to find Gabe, who had lain down on bed and was covering his face with one of the bathroom towels.

"That bad, huh?"

"I'm fine," Gabe said, sounding miserable. "Did you find anything?"

"Basement door is locked, and securely too."

"Good. Would be nice to have some of our electronic tools right about now."

"Guess we get to do things the old way."

"There may be a crowbar or something in his barn. Go out and see, but keep an eye out. If he comes back from wherever he went off to tell him you're stir crazy and needed to take a walk."

That excuse wasn't far from the truth. The farmhouse wasn't wigging Jesse out quite as much as the bar had, but it wasn't exactly comfortable, and he'd never been one for sitting on his ass all day anyway. It was past noon, and the sun had finally started to warm the day up. It splashed against the grain and cast a brilliant yellow light out as far as he could see. Jesse sucked in the air that smelt of dirt and fertilizer, looked down the road for any sign of Matthew returning, and then made his way to the barn. The barn doors were unlocked, so it was easy to swing them open a crack and slip inside. Through the haze and shadow he could see the building had been converted into a garage of some sort, with a small collection of cars in various states of disassembly. There was a table of tools on the far wall, and Jesse dug through it, eventually coming up with the crowbar he was looking for. Finally, things were going right. 

He was making his way out of the barn when some nagging thought made him pause and take another look at the cars packed into the building. Close to the front, looking less decomposed than the rest, was a small yellow sedan with Pennsylvania license plates. Jesse crept closer, and shifted the crowbar to his left hand to leave his right free for Peacemaker. There was no doubt about it. It was Dupris' car.

"Fuck," Jesse muttered to himself. Ghosts or no, it suddenly was looking less like Dupris had gone into hiding and more that he had met some violent fate. With one eye on the barn door Jesse cased the car. There was no sign of damage or violence, but when he tried to hot wire the vehicle there was no response, as if the battery and all backups were dead. Just like the bikes then. With a sudden sense of urgency Jesse left the barn and hurried back to Gabe. If it was just a handful of violent men it was nothing that Gabe and he couldn't handle, but Jack's words were ringing in his head. People don't go into that town he had said. You're going to get Jesse killed, he had said. What would make a man like Jack, who feared nothing, say such a thing?

Jesse took the steps up to the bedroom two at a time and burst into the room, but Gabe had disappeared.

"Gabe?"

Maybe he was in the kitchen. Jesse hurried down to see, but he wasn't there either. He wasn't anywhere in the house, and wasn't answering Jesse's increasingly loud calls. Jesse had been gone barely five minutes. Where the hell could Gabe had gotten to in that time? He searched the house again, this time wary of calling out, but the only sign that Gabe had ever been in the house at all were his bags tucked under the guest bed, and Gabe went nowhere without his shotguns.

The sun was beginning its slow descent into the horizon, and the shadows were making their relentless crawl across the floor. Jesse tried the phone. If something had gotten Gabe Jesse wasn't going to have much of a chance against it, and Jack needed to know, but when he put the phone to his ear all he could hear was the whisper of static and no amount of furious dialing seemed to change it. Jesse looked at the receiver with a mixture of fury and dismay. "What the _fuck_ ," he muttered. Things were getting out of hand, fast.

He could run, maybe. Give himself some open space and a chance to shoot whatever tried to make a go at him. Jack was coming in the morning. He only had to hold out by then, but Gabe was gone, and like hell Jesse was going to leave him to his fate, so the only real option was forward. He made his way back to the basement door. The space between it and the wall was so seamless that it took a minute to finally jam the crowbar into the gap, but his adrenaline was pumping, and after a few failed attempts Jesse managed to ram it in, and after a couple solid pushes the door jam cracked and Jesse was through.

With Peacemaker in one hand and the crowbar in another, Jesse crept down the basement stairs, which continued far deeper than he had been expecting, It was pitch black below with only the light from the upper floor seeping in, and as Jesse went lower and the stairs began to curve to the right, even that began to fail him, until he was climbing down by feel alone. He was on a spiral staircase, he realized, and one that went deep into the earth. Finally, a faint red light appeared ahead, escaping under another door. Jesse could barely make out the handle, and a circle of some sort carved into the wood, covered in the same symbols he had seen wrapping around the house. He put his ear to the door.

On the other side he could hear murmuring, but the words sounded like complete gibberish. The voice was too soft to recognize, and although there was only one speaker there was no telling how many people might be on other side of the door. No more than six, probably, Jesse thought grimly. And he was past the point of asking questions first. He was going to bust in, shoot everything that moved, and figure things out after. No fucking demon cult was taking him in.

Jesse took a breath, squared his shoulders, and tested the handle. It turned without resistance. The next second he shoved the door open and stepped inside. On the other side of the door was a round room with a ceiling so high it disappeared into shadow. Three men stood around a table on which Gabe was lying, stripped of his shirt, and above Gabe, hanging by its feet by red cord, with its chest pried open and head removed, was a corpse. The men turned to him in union. Jesse only had time to register the red paint on their faces before Peacekeeper was up and the sound of gunfire was bouncing off the walls. Jesse was hurrying to Gabe's side before the last body hit the floor.

"Jesus fuck," Jesse muttered, over and over again, as he checked Gabe for injury. He was covered in blood -- the corpse above them was dripping a steady stream of it onto him --but Gabe's head was still attached to his body, as were the rest of his limbs, and all his organs seemed to still be inside of him. As far as Jesse could tell he was completely whole. Jesse lifted him onto his shoulder and started to carry him towards the door. The sooner he got out of eyesight of that macabre ceiling ornament the better.

"Excuse me."

Jesse froze a few feet from the door as one of the men sat up from the floor. An elaborate mask of red and white face paint obscured his features, but Jesse knew it was Matthew.

"That man is ours now," Matthew said.

"Like hell he is," Jesse replied, and went to shoot Matthew again. Only this time instead of the blast of his gun the room was filled with a deep, echoing groan, and the walls flashed up in a brilliant hot red. Jesse's bullet still tore through Matthew's head, but having half his skull blasted off didn't seem to bother him at all, and within two seconds everything was reconstituting itself. Meanwhile, the other two men were getting up off the ground and squaring up for a fight, looking like they hadn't just been shot clean through half a minute ago.

Jesse wasn't going to outrun three men with Gabe on his back, so fight it was.

"Not very polite to shoot your host," Matthew said.

"Ain't very polite decapitating your guests," Jesse spat back.

"If you're worried about your friend, don't be. He's heard the call. He'll be one with our guardian soon."

The three men were rounding about him, and the basement door was at Jesse's back. The stench of old blood and smoke filled the air, and the body of what was likely Dupris swung languorously above them, dripping its blood in pits and pats on the stone table below.

Even though they outnumbered him and didn't seem to need to worry about injury or death, Matthew and his little gang of cultists did not seem eager to engage. In fact, it felt like they were waiting for something. Jesse used the chance to lean down and place Gabe gently on the ground, Peacekeeper trained ahead, and once upright prodded Gabe with his toe. It would be real nice if it was two versus three...

"Perhaps you want your friend to wake up," Matthew said.

"What did you do to him?"

"We didn't do anything. Like I said. Our guardian has been calling to him. He's a strong man, and can take the blood. He walked down here under his own power."

"Bullshit."

"Let us wake him. He'll tell you himself."

Jesse poked Gabe with his toe again, this time with more urgency. "Come try putting your hands on him again. I'll shoot you as many times as I need."

"I'm sorry you feel that way. You seemed an intelligent man, and I hoped you might be an ally. But if that's how you want to do things, then we'll oblige you."

That seemed to be the cue. The two other men came charging at Jesse. A bullet through one of their hearts seemed to slow that one down a little, but it too was met with a flash of brilliant red light and an echoing, disembodied moan. It was the markings. Jesse realized the walls of this room were covered in them. They rained down in streams from the dark ceiling and now seemed to throb with life as Jesse and the other men struggled. There wasn't much any of the three men could do, unarmed as they were, but it didn't matter how many times Jesse managed to land a hit with his crowbar or take one to the ground. They showed no sign of fatigue and no hint of pain, only grim determination. As he fought, landing blow after blow but unable to unable to focus on completely disabling one man for fear of another coming up on him, he realized that they weren't aiming to hurt or kill him, but to get a grip on him. It was only Gabe, lying peacefully on the ground, soaked in someone else's blood, that kept Jesse from cutting and running, but as the minutes ticked by he could feel himself succumbing to fatigue. He cast about for something, anything to help him turn the tide.

Experimentally Jesse swung his crowbar out and struck symbols on the wall. A low bellow echoed out from the ceiling. All three men flinched.

"Don't do that," Matthew said.

"I'll do what I want," Jesse replied, and struck at the marks again.

This time, when the three men charged they didn't hold back. They dove at him with no regard for their own safety, pausing only when Jesse managed to break a bone or knock one down. The entire room had started to grow brighter and brighter. The walls were throbbing at the pace of a frantic heart, and the disembodied moan was now a constant roar in Jesse's ears. Whatever it was in the chamber with them, Jesse had clearly pissed it off.

The room was now so bright that all shadow had been banished. One of the men disengaged from the fight, another was busy realigning a knee cap, giving Jesse another opportunity to turn his attention to the wall this time scratching a line as long and deep as he could manage through the wood with his crowbar. The room flashed with light, and from the wall spat a gush of what looked like blood, splattering across Jesse's chest. The one man on his feet staggered and looked up. Jesse followed his glance. The glow from the wards were now bright enough that he could see all the way to the top of the ceiling, where nestled into the very peak was a pulsing, formless mass of what looked like raw flesh. The man with the broken kneecap was up again, and Matthew was coming back to the fight, this time with a broad sword, of all things, in his hands. It was now or never. Jesse upholstered Peacekeeper, took his best guess at center mass, and shot up into the ceiling.

The entire room shook as if an earthquake had hit it, and blood rained down on Jesse's head as he plugged his ears against the broken screaming cutting through the air. The room was yet again plunged into darkness. The three men in front of him were screaming too as they charged him. When Jesse hit them now they seemed to feel it, but he had been fighting for what felt like and hour, and they were only now starting to feel affected. All it took was a slip of his feet on the now slick floor and they had him on his back, Peacemaker spinning away from him as they rained kicks and punches down on him before grabbing him and dragging him up to his feet. Matthew stood in front of him, sword in hand and face a mask of unhinged rage.

"Hang him up," he ordered.

At some point in the brawl the body swinging from the ceiling had flopped onto the table. Jesse realized what he thought had been a cord wrapped around it was some sort of fleshy appendage. It hung empty now from the ceiling, and reached out to Jesse as the men dragged him over. The idea that he might be consumed by whatever unholy abomination was sucked up on the ceiling gave Jesse a second, desperate wind, and he struggled mightily, screaming Gabe's name as he did, but it seemed like all he was doing was delaying the inevitable. He was lifted up, feet first, towards the the center of the room, and the long, proboscis-like appendage wrapped itself around his feet and started to worm its way up his torso, securing his arms against his side. Blood flowed freely down from the creature above, and Jesse was now thoroughly soaked in it. It dribbled up his nose, and into his eyes, blinding him. He blinked furiously, trying to catch sight of Gabe, his only chance. Matthew was crouching down next to him. If he was saying anything, it was drowned out in the angry screaming of the thing above them, which continued unabated, but whatever he did, it seemed to wake Gabe up. Jesse had never felt more relief when Gabe turned and looked at him, but that feeling quickly died when there was no recognition in Gabe's face, only blank disinterest.

Jesse McCree was not one for despair. He had been fighting tooth and nail his whole life. But as Matthew whispered in Gabe's ear and handed over his sword, and the worm-like tongue of the thing above them constricted around him, Jesse looked into Gabe's eyes and felt himself starting to sob.

Matthew, on the other hand, looked triumphant. "It didn't have to be this difficult," he said as he and Gabe approached Jesse. "Had you not been so hasty perhaps our guardian would have found you, too a willing and welcome host. Now instead you serve as nothing but food to heal the damage you've done."

Next to him Gabe rolled his eyes.

Matthew turned to Gabe. "Would you do the honors, brother?"

"Certainly," Gabe said, and with one swift strike removed Matthew's head from his body. The other two men could only stumble back before they too had been swiftly dispatched. One more swing and Jesse was falling into Gabe's arms as the creature's tongue flopped about on the floor and the creature screamed out again in rage.

Jesse gestured to Peacemaker. "Shoot it," he rasped. Gabe retrieved the gun, reloaded, and emptied all six bullets into the thing above them. The room shook again. This time bits of stone tumbled from the ceiling as blood began to seep through the cracks in the walls.

"Okay, let's get the hell out of here," Gabe said, and picked Jesse up onto his back. Had he any pride or energy left Jesse would have protested that he could flee under his own power just fine, thank you, but he was wrung out in every way, and clung to Gabe for dear life as Gabe bounded up the stairs, crashed through the basement door, and bounded out of the house. He stopped at the end of the driveway. The only sign that either of them had just done battle with some sort of blood demon was the echos of screaming still pouring out of the house, and the trail of bloody footprints leading outside, Jesse and Gabe both stood dripping wet and sticky. Jesse was suddenly overcome with the desire to be sick on the side of the road, and Gabe let him down to puke his heart out next to the farmhouse mailbox while he looked back at the house thoughtfully.

"We should probably burn it down," he finally said.

"Maybe dig a pit and drop a small nuke down there."

"It wasn't that bad."

Jesse looked up at Gabe with complete disbelief from where he was sitting at the side of the road, his legs having finally failed him completely.

"What?" Gabe said defensively. "It was just some weird genetic freak show. Gross, for sure, but we've dealt with worse."

"You were sound asleep for all of it! I shot those men and they got right back up! That shit ain't natural!"

"Seems like they stayed down to me."

"If you make me stand up right now to pummel you you're gonna regret it. You didn't see what I saw. And how the hell did you get down there, anyway? Matthew said you walked down of your own volition."

"I don't think so. My head was killing me and I lay down. The next thing I knew I was waking up and you were hanging upside down looking like you'd gotten dipped in cherry syrup."

"Nice poker face by the way. I honestly thought you were about to gut me."

"Sorry about that. There was a lot to take in there for a moment."

It was too absurd, Jesse cracked up until he was crying, Gabe let him get it out, patiently rubbing his back until he managed to gather himself together again.

"So you don't remember going down there?"

"Nope."

"You remember being called to?"

Gabe glanced to Jesse. "Called?"

"Matthew said the guardian was calling to you."

"Seems like Matthew was a kook harboring illegal genetic experiments. I wouldn't take anything he said at face value."

The screaming was dying down from inside the house. Whether that was a good or a bad thing, Jesse wasn't sure. The sun was halfway sunk beneath the horizon. Jack was due to arrive soon, and all they needed to do now was make it through the night. Jesse was beyond exhausted, but after some rest he managed to get up, and the two of them set about putting fire to the house. Gabe insisted in going back in for his shotguns, and Jesse insisted on accompanying him, even though he felt like he was loosing a year of his life for every second he remained within the walls of that house, but nothing happened, and Jesse let himself believe that they really had killed whatever it was lying deep below the earth.

The two of them sat near the road, Jesse leaning heavy against Gabe, and watched the house go up in flames until the sun came back up and Jack arrived to retrieve them, five jeeps packed with agents in tow. He didn't even ask for a debriefing on site, but instead gathered Jesse and Gabe up in his vehicle and high-tailed it straight back to the watchpoint, where only then did he call on Jesse and Gabe to debrief.

"I should have just come down in the hovercraft the second you called," Jack said.

"We probably would have left that thing lying there if you had. It all worked out in the end," Gabe said.

"Well, I'm glad you're both alright. I'm afraid it's going to be... difficult to put this op in the books. But you should both take some leave, rest, recover. If you feel any lingering effects, make sure you tell me."

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Gabe said, and that was that. He and Jesse went on leave for a few weeks. It took Jesse a little while to settle down. The fact that they had agreed to not speak about what had happened seemed to make things worse for him, but Gabe did what he could, giving him all the back rubs he could ask for, cooking his favorite meals, and holding him close when he woke up in the middle of the night, calling Gabe's name. It was a nice change to spend such a large block of time together with no pressing business. The op itself had to be classified as a failure. Although the body in the basement had never been identified, Dupris was most certainly dead, putting an end to months of careful surveillance. And the Guardian had been grievously injured, and Matthew and the other men killed. It was unfortunate but necessary. Matthew hadn't understood what Jesse meant to Gabriel, and there hadn't been time to explain. But as long as the host endured, so too would the blood, and, Gabe thought as he watched Jesse sleep snuggled up under his arm, some day they might have a chance to bring Jesse into the fold.

  
  



End file.
